Political Quotes

“This is by no stretch of the imagination a vote on whether or not one believes in nuclear deterrence. The United States has in its possession now and will continue to have far more nuclear firepower than is necessary to deter anybody in the world. We have not only the submarine-based weapons, we have 450 land- based missiles, and we have the bomber fleet. It has been acknowledged repeatedly by studies at the Pentagon that we can effectively reduce the amount of nuclear armaments we have by a third or more without jeopardizing our deterrence, our ability to destroy any country in the world many times over. The question is: How do we pay for what we have and where we are going? An amendment that I had, which was not ruled in order, I am sad to say, would have requested a CBO study for what our costs are over the course of the next 25 years. Most estimates are that we are in a pattern of spending $1 trillion or more over the course of these 30 years. That is big money, no matter how you cut it. We are in the process of hollowing out our military. We have got problems in terms of compensation and benefit. We have a military that has been strained, stretched, and damaged by the ill-advised adventure in Iraq.…”